


By the Light of the Moon

by sh1defier



Category: Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/M, Frederick is seven feet tall, Lon'qu is briefly there, Personalized Robin, Pre-S Rank, Sully is mentioned and implied to have been married since the start of the game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-17
Updated: 2015-12-17
Packaged: 2018-05-07 04:29:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5443364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sh1defier/pseuds/sh1defier
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Following a declaration of war against Plegia, Chrom leads the Shepherds to the southern edge of Ylisse to be sure that the coast is secure against invasion.  As the army sets out on the march, their tactician, Endellion, finds herself losing sleep over a series of increasingly troubling nightmares.  Suffering from exhaustion but not wishing to concern the comrades depending on her, she decides to call upon an offer once made to her by a dear friend… a terribly embarrassing one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By the Light of the Moon

\--

The quiet of the late hour hung on her shoulders with the weight of a soaking wet blanket.  Though she was walking between rows of tents, the sleeping quarters of her friends, any sounds of human life had been fastened away securely under the sound-proof fabric that Frederick seemed to reinforce on a daily basis.  On any other night she would have recalled this bit of trivia rather fondly—it was a cozy thought, that they were all so well-taken-care of, even when sleeping more or less on the ground—but right now the dead silence was eerie, and only served to make the pounding of her pulse in her chest and in her head seem even louder by comparison.

Even her footsteps were silent, swallowed up by the sandy earth each time they fell. She anticipated the sound of snow crunching beneath her boots as she hurried through the path down the middle of camp, and every time a step failed to make noise, she glanced warily to the ground to be sure that she wasn't still dreaming. But they had left the frigid Regna Ferox several days ago—they had touched down near the arid deserts of Plegia, even, and were heading southeast now. The snow was long behind them and the air was warmer here, even at night, but she had donned her coat before stepping out nonetheless and even in the heat she pulled it tighter around her body, and her hood up over her head to try and muffle her reverberating heartbeat.

She could no longer remember a time when sleeping had been easy, assuming there ever had been one. Her new life had begun with her being woken up out of a violent nightmare—now here she was once again, but while practice seemed to make perfect in every other instance, Endellion was quickly learning that nightterrors only seemed to get harder to cope with the more frequently she had them. In fact she'd barely slept at all since returning from the border—the rings around her eyes were looking less a pale periwinkle these days and more a deep, toxic violet—but had done her best to keep that information to herself. This had proven to be a sound strategy so far, for on most nights she could shake off any residual nervousness with a walk, no need to worry the others; with a war just declared she couldn't afford to shake anyone's faith in her ability to lead them. But walking it off wasn't doing much to quell the chill in the pit of her stomach right now. She was still shaking, still hugging her arms tightly around her ribs as if her hands were the only things keeping her bones from bursting forth out of her, too big and shaped all wrong for a human body, moving on their own in spite of leaving torn muscles behind in their wake, in spite of how hard she fought to direct them otherwise, moving towards her friends, and then... Bizarre as they were, unrealistic and strange as these images from her dreams were, they were still all too fresh in her mind to be reasoned with.

The hooded woman finally came to a stop and relaxed her grip on her midriff, as if to prove to herself that her nightmares wouldn't repeat themselves in reality.  Nothing happened.  She wrung her hands for a moment, then turned her head to give her good eye a final scope of the grounds to be sure she was still alone before resting her gaze on the tent she now stood closest to. Thankfully, horrific visions weren't the only things still fresh in her mind that evening.

She sighed, quietly, to herself—at herself, really. She couldn't worry the others... but what good was a tactician who might collapse from exhaustion in the middle of a battle at any given moment? Going without sleep wasn't a viable option either, which left her in the position of coming to a compromise…

She pulled her baggy sleeves up to her elbows and carefully slipped her hand in between the folds of the tent before her, groping blindly until she felt the cool metal of its internal fasteners. For better or worse, the tactician had found that she had a bit of a knack for picking locks during their time up north (easier to sneak into a fort than to wait on finding the key for the door, after all)—not that the average tent had the most sophisticated security system installed, but nonetheless it saved her the trouble of hoping the person whom she was seeking would hear her 'knocking' through the sound-proof tarp. After a few moments of fooling, she retracted her arms again and took a final, steeling breath, before pulling the flap aside and poking her nose into the darkness.

“Virion?”

Cut off from the moon and starlight outside, the interior of Virion's tent was black as ink. She squinted her steely eye, trying to adjust to the changing light as she waited for a response; when one failed to come, she widened the hole she was peeking through to allow the moonlight to cut a path into the tent. The soft glow illuminated the interior bit by bit as it fell, giving shape to the room inside.  She detected first a small table with stools set around it, then lining the walls were crates stacked with papers and some manner of oblong object covered in its entirety by a little blanket.  A shelf, a quiver of arrows, the cot at the furthest side of the tent, the unmistakable glimmer of light falling on iron, taut and poised to strike like the fangs of a snake, about to let fly—

“Virion?” The word had scarcely left her mouth a second time before she froze as she realized she was staring down the shaft of a drawn arrow.

“Endellion?” came the reply now, in a distinct, and thankfully surprised, voice—the man sitting up in his cot across from her immediately lowered his weapon, very carefully relaxing the bowstring as he did. The moment he disarmed himself the invisible string holding her at attention broke as well and she slumped between her shoulders with a sigh of relief. “M-My pardons, my lady!” he stammered as he set his bow aside and returned the arrow to its quiver. “If I had known it was you gracing my doorway, rather than some malevolent entity, some brigand--”

“It's fine, Virion,” Endellion replied, pulling her hood back down to her shoulders with the hand not currently holding the tent open for her. “I'm sorry for startling you.”

“No need for apologies on your part, my dear. If you'll give me but a moment...” Endellion remained at the door as requested while the archer retrieved a book from the side of his cot.  The tome looked already slightly thinned out as he flipped it open and carefully tore out the topmost page along the binding, discarding the remainder of the book into the blankets beside him; the page he'd removed, then, he rolled into a tight coil between his thin fingers, before turning once more to the ground on his side of the bed and sliding the paper longways into a small piece of glassware. With two fingers, he tamped down on the protruding curl one last time to push it snugly inside—at his last touch, the page began to emit faint yellow glow, then crumbled away into ash, replaced instead by a warm little flame budding in the base of the glass. Satisfied with this, Virion turned back to her, his distinct sort-of-smile, sort-of-self-satisfied-smirk, now illuminated by the lit lamp beside him. He raised an arm and gestured welcomingly to her. “Please, do come in!”

Endellion obliged him, allowing the tent flap to fall closed behind her as she stepped indoors—her interest, however, was now firmly fixated on the lamp instead of the man. She turned back to him only to be sure he was following her as she pointed excitedly at the piece of glassware on the ground. “You know magic?”

“Hm?” He followed the line of her arm, then nodded. “Ah, yes. I suppose I--” He began to move from his place in bed to elaborate, but paused on the act of shifting the blankets off of his waist. His heavy-lidded eyes drifted downwards, then back to the woman standing across the room. A faintly rosy tint took to his cheeks and he calmly diverted the course of the conversation. “Pardon me once more, my dear, but would you mind averting your eagle-eyed gaze for a moment?”

Endellion furrowed her brow, then took the time to look the archer over properly for the first time since calling on him that evening. Virion remained sitting up in his cot; in spite of the fact that she seemed to have woken him, his pale blue hair was still perfectly in place, curled near the ends and falling delicately over his shoulders and onto his bare chest—a sight that raised her eyebrows before she could help it.

“I fear my manly figure and noble bearing may be somewhat overwhelming for you to behold...”

There was a faint dusting of that same silvery blue on his bare chest, she realized next, her cheeks growing slightly warmer as she did—it continued down the length of his torso, disappearing behind the blanket that his other hand was still holding up, as though to hide the fact that…

Blood rushed into her face; she quickly clamped her hand over her eye and whipped about-face to face the door again with a splutter. “Oh, gods.” Behind her, she heard the soft rustling of the blanket being pulled aside and blushed even harder. For a moment she considered simply continuing back out the door and returning to her own quarters, for a good tactician knows when they are outmatched, after all, and when to retreat from a situation they aren't equipped to handle. “I didn't realize you slept, um, naked,” she muttered more to the wall than to her companion.

He heard her regardless. “And I did not realize that you would opt for a longcoat as your nightwear in this weather. We are marching toward the coast, are we not? I fear you may have left your heart in Regna Ferox!” While Virion bustled about with his clothes behind her, Endellion quelled her desire to flee by busying herself with repairing her earlier handiwork on the fastener. Gods forbid someone else walk in on this. Then came the sound of a drawstring being pulled, accompanied by an all-too melodious “Et, voilà!”

Endellion braced herself for the worst, then turned back around to see the gentleman standing at the foot of his bed, his loose-fitting archer's trousers firmly tied onto his waist, and, for reasons that she honestly could not fathom, his frilly cravate tied firmly onto his otherwise bare neck, as he had chosen to remain without his shirt. He looked particularly pleased with himself, as he often did, and offered her a polite and yet entirely ridiculous bow. The tactician regarded him, bemusing in all his glory; she blinked only once, opened her mouth with full intent to speak, but words failed her in place of a sudden burst of laughter bubbling up and out of her like erupting magma, and she doubled over herself. When she went down, Virion stood back up, lightly crossing his arms and waiting for her to finish, while she braced herself on her knees with a hand.

“The trousers I understand, but Virion...” She carefully pulled herself back up to full height to match him, partially hiding her vibrant grin behind her other hand to try and continue the conversation. “Are the frills really necessary?”

“But of course, my dear Endellion!” He seemed utterly unfazed by her riotous response; his smile hadn't faltered in the slightest. “See how the lady smiles! Your delight is all the reason in the world I need.” She smiled even wider. “Why, when you first entered my chambers this evening, you looked as though you'd seen a ghost.” These words, however, grounded her like gravity—the visions from her nightmares flooded her senses all over again, her smile waned and she lowered her arm back to hold herself as she had been before she'd come inside. Virion's smile thinned then too, disappointedly. “And why does the lavender-haired lady grace my doorstep on this fine evening?”

The lady in question idly tousled the longer side of her hair as he remarked on it, and searched for the words to explain herself. How was she to approach this subject?  “I'm sorry if I woke you, Virion. I realize it's late.”  She decided to ease into the subject.  “I... need someone to talk to.”

“It so happens that ‘talking’ is an art in which I am most talented!” chimed Virion.

A little smile returned to her. “So I've gathered.”

“Please, allow me to do you the honors, then, my lady.” He bowed to her again, slightly more reserved this time, and then strode to the western end of the room to rummage among his things. Endellion took another step forwards, watching him curiously as he crossed past her and moved to the opposite side instead to set out an array of trinkets onto one of his crates: a trio of small saucers and a pair of porcelain cups, a little tin box with a decorative floral design etched and painted into its metal sides, a fairly unremarkable canteen, a tea kettle, and the book he had lit his lamp with before, retrieved from where he had left it on his cot. Her interest was immediately piqued again by its resurfacing, and she approached the man as he set to work preparing their tea.

“I didn’t know you could do magic, Virion,” she repeated herself from before, eyeing the book as it lay on the crate.  The warm glow of the lamp illuminated its ruddy red color and sparkled on the thin layer of gold leaf imbedded into the cover in a pattern that would have made it interchangeable with any number of similar tomes strewn about her own tent.  “Well, I’ve heard from Miriel that you fancy yourself a fortune-teller, but tome magic is a little different.”

“Yes, yes, my… fortune-telling.”  He chuckled in a way that would have sounded sheepish if she didn’t know him, pinching some of the fragrant flowery contents of his tin box into his teapot.  “I have a great many unique skills at my disposal, in fact.”  

“Why didn’t you tell anyone about this one?  This could be integral to developing new strategies!  If I’d known you were a mage--”

“Hardly a mage! “ he quickly corrected her.  “Er, what I mean is…  I fear that my vast array of skills are not all… equally well-developed.  My magical prowess isn’t much beyond parlor tricks, if I may be frank.  My ‘look’ and lifestyle demand certain routines to be maintained--routines which often require a number of items not-so readily disposable to an army on the march.”  He took a moment to gesture at his teaset, indicatively. “It is to my benefit to be able to minimize the amount of excess trinkets I carry on my person.  A tome or two in place of all the odds and ends necessary for setting a proper fire, for instance.”  

"I think most people would just leave the toys behind instead of going out and learning magic.”

“Impossible, my dear,” he chuckled brightly, “For I am not ‘most people’!  But you understand, then--archest archer that I am, my dillying with magical texts now and then means little in the face of my impeccable bowmanship.”  With a clink he closed the lid on his tin box and moved to pop the cap on his canteen.  

“I know better than to take you away from your bow, Virion.  You’re easily the finest archer in this army--”

“Please, my lady!”  She paused, surprised by his interjection.  “...Do go on!”  Then breathed out from her pointed nose, stifling a rising laugh.  

“But I still think this is an avenue worth pursuing,” she persisted.  “I’m not saying we should put you on the front lines with a tome, but it’s always good to have a backup plan--a way to protect yourself, come the worst.  I’d feel better about sending you out into the field if I knew you could fricassee the odd foe who gets in too close for you to draw your bow.”

Virion finished pouring the water into the kettle and closed his canteen once more; his smile had pulled upwards into a grin, the top row of his pearly teeth now peeking out from behind his lips.   “Why, dearest Endellion, do you truly worry so for me?”

“Of course I do--it’s my responsibility to keep you alive!”  She said this with a laugh, but as the words left her throat a cold sensation began to creep up the insides of her stomach again; she swallowed, then quickly returned to the previous subject.  “You can summon the energy to make simple spells work for you, so you’ve surmounted the most difficult part already.”  While Endellion plead her case, Virion set his canteen to the side and the kettle onto the appropriately-sized saucer for it, then turned open his tome to the new front page.  “And magic is quicker than drawing a sword, and stronger than something like a dagger--there are some spells that you can cast just by barely moving your hands.”  She suddenly bowed her body over the archer’s closer arm, pinning it in place on the crate with his hand still holding the front cover of his book.  Her own arms she reached across his as she moved, her fingertips stretching out to full length so that they touched down where the teapot touched the saucer.  From where they had alighted, a thin ring of light raced around the circumference of the pot and ignited into a puff of low-burning bluish embers, confined to the plate and hugging closely to the base of the kettle.  Endellion turned her eye up to see Virion peering down curiously at her and her demonstration.  “I’m helping,” she explained.  It occurred to her then that his curious look and uncharacteristically closed mouth might have less to do with the unprompted assistance than with the fact that she had unexpectedly thrust herself into his personal space.  She quickly withdrew and straightened her back, then looked back at her work with, admittedly, some self-admiration of her own.  “... Although our mages have told me that most people don’t do magic that way.”  

The second little fire in the room cast a glitter into Virion’s dark, reddish eyes, just as his lamp had done to the tome in his hand.  “And you, my dear, are not ‘most people’ either!”

“And neither are you!”  She continued, latching onto his words from before.  “So I’m sure that it can be taught.  Someone had to have taught me at some point, I imagine, although I wouldn’t know who it was… or how, for that matter, but I could find a way, I’m certain of it.”  And she was certain, although she had no real reason to be, and Virion had no reason to believe it was possible.  “If nothing else, I’ve saved you a page in your book for another time…”  The strategist hung on this statement for a moment, wondering whether or not she was overstepping a boundary.  Virion might have called it a ‘routine’ but his tea-making was nearly ritualistic, and Endellion was certainly no cook.  “Will you at least consider it?”

To her relief, he appeared to be charmed by her whole display as he lightly tipped the cover closed on his tome once more.  “I will, most certainly.  I have heard whispers that passionate people are the most gifted with fire, you know.”

“And you’re nothing if not passionate.”

“Indeed, I am!  And a great many things more than ‘nothing’--but no, my dear, if we were to start on describing all of the things that Virion is, I fear we would be up all night!”  He laughed again, and she did the same, and hoped that he didn’t catch the slight flush that her cheeks took on at his last few words; he took a step back from the crate and she followed him as he left the tea to boil and led her nearer to his table and stools.

“Maybe this will be my chance to repay you some for all you’ve taught me during our strategy games,” she put forth then, and Virion nodded back to her.  He bypassed the table entirely--Endellion, however, hung back beside it as he sought out his new directive.  He took only a moment.

“Perhaps.”  He turned back to face her again with what appeared to be a rolled-up tapestry clutched snugly in his arms.  When his stride brought him back to her, he unfurled the checkered cloth over his table, and from his place still semi-prostrate he cut his eyes up to her and held out an arm, gesturing to the stool she stood beside.  “Now then, my lady, might I offer you a seat?”  

She giggled again; strange and foppish as his mannerisms were, there was something inherently endearing about them, in the way that he so sincerely treated her to a silly odds-and-ends tea party as though it were a soirée for only the finest of nobility.  His casual hedonism made the tent feel less small; the floral aroma of the tea slowly filling the room made the oncoming war feel like it could have been one of her bad dreams.  The en-virion-ment was more than a little infectious.  Like a true noble lady, she bunched up the sides of her coat and nightdress where they hung on her wide hips and pulled them up to her knees in her best curtsy, imitating what she’d seen Maribelle do no fewer than fifty times since they’d rescued her.  The dandy gentleman beamed approvingly at her and she dropped her dresses to take her seat, but Virion did not surface immediately, so she hesitated; when he did surface, he did so clutching a new box (wooden rather than tin this time), which he set at the edge of the table to open.  He must have pulled it out from under the table after laying the cloth out over it--she had mistaken the gesture for another bow.  Now she felt a bit foolish for the curtsy.

“Um,” she started as Virion began to extract little polished figures from his new box, and lining them up side-by side, one per each square of the tablecloth.  “Virion, what are you doing?”

“Assembling our battlefield for the evening, my dear.”  He paused in placing his pawns to admire the way that the lights in the room reflected across the smooth surface of the black marble king.  “I fear my men lack the quaint charm of your hand-carved army, but we can pretend for just one night, no?  I would hardly ask you to return to your tent just to bring us the proper pieces when we can just as easily make do with--”

“--O-Oh, no!” she interrupted, rapidly waving her hands before her at a pace that made her sleeves flap and clink against one another at their metallic ends; at the perplexed look Virion offered her in response to her profuse refusal she dropped them closer to her sides, then turned slightly aside and ran a composing hand through the long side of her pale purple hair as she hunted for the words to better explain herself.  “I’m sorry--it’s just that, if we start on a game, then we really will be up all night.”  She peeked back up at him, and he seemed to accept this explanation.

“Ah, yes, I suppose you’re right…” he conceded, nonetheless setting the black king in place on the makeshift chess board rather than back into the box.  

With some hesitation, she ventured further.  “... Although, that does remind me of why I originally came to see you.”  Broaching this subject was not going to be easy, she knew; she had to be cautious.  “Because of something we’ve talked about over one of our games, I mean.”

“Oh?” He closed the lid on his glossy wooden chessmen’s box, but his lingering gaze made it clear that she had his full attention in spite of his busy hands.  “Do tell.”

The lady breathed in once, then out, forcing herself to press forwards.  “I haven’t been sleeping well.”  He let out another chuckle that cut her slightly short.

“Ah yes, I now recall!”  Virion wound his fingers into some of the long, loose curls framing his collarbone and cravat, pulled them away from his neck and allowed them to fall back into place strand by strand in a icy cascade; his lips curled into a haughty smirk as he did.  “Still dreaming of your noble Virion?”

Endellion grimaced, guilt nipping at the bottom of her heart.  “Sort of, actually--but not in the way you’re hoping…”  The archer’s lashes fluttered in a series of swift, surprised little blinks--clearly he had not actually been anticipating such a confirmation.  His smirk threatened to turn into something cheekier but allowing him to take even a moment’s delight in what he may have thought her predicament was felt deceitful in a way that made her stomach churn--she blurted out the rest before he got the chance:  “I murdered you.”  

All traces of warm amusement quickly drained from her companion’s face with her clarification.  

“You and the others--I dreamed that I…”  She struggled to complete the thought aloud for a second time, and so her words trailed away.

“That… certainly is rather gruesome,” he offered in return through his own grimace, and she sighed again, her violet head sinking between her shoulders and her eye turning back to the ground.

“You don’t know the half of it…” she muttered back and pulled her coat more tightly around her body again to cut the rising cold.  “I dreamed I turned into a monster--that a monster came ripping out of me.”  She took a shuddery breath; prickly physical sensations danced along her arms like static electricity.  “Gods, just thinking about it is making my skin crawl.”  Uneasily, she rubbed the eyespots hanging loosely around her arms--if she stayed on this topic for too long, though, she might never leave it, and there was something else more pressing to discuss.  “This isn’t the first time I’ve had a dream like this, either--hardly so.  But I couldn’t worry the others.  I can’t afford to shake anyone’s faith in my ability to lead, especially with a war just declared…”  Suddenly she turned her eye back up to Virion again, silently pleading for him to understand her thinking--the concern now etched into his ordinarily flippant features felt affirmative to her.  “But, I’m no good to anyone if I might collapse from exhaustion in the middle of a battle, either, so I had to come to some kind of, a compromise.”  Her throat felt a bit dry now.  “Which is why I came here--I’m out of options, Virion.”  The momentary cold that had been eating away at her had ebbed in favor of a sudden wave of hotness washing up over her neck and into her cheeks; she readjusted the collar and hood of her coat, loosening it up a bit more to release some of the steam from her volcanic embarrassment.  “At this point I’m willing to try just about anything, and--”

Her change in demeanor must have been as physical as it felt, as a sudden degree of alarm came over Virion.  “Endellion, what is the matter?  Have you taken ill?” he interjected, his concern elevated even from before.  “You look feverish!”  He started around the table, extending a cautious hand in her direction; she took a step back, feeling even more foolish than she had before.

“I’m fine!” she stammered back.  “I just--I was going to ask if you might…”  The tactician had guided herself this far; retreat was no longer an option, she had approached this topic with as much stealth as she could muster but a swift and silent dispatch wasn’t an option in this case--her only choice was to launch a direct assault on the words she could barely bring herself to speak.  They tumbled out of her less gracefully than she would have liked.  “Before, when we talked about this, you told me if I still couldn’t sleep you’d be willing to try s-singing, to me.”  

The force of her finishing her request had caused Endellion to sink down again almost shamefully between her shoulders.  But nonetheless she forced herself to remain staring with her one visible silver eye over the bridge of her arrowhead nose at the man across from her, who had frozen mid-step, his own heavily-lidded, ruby-tinted eyes now wider than they tended to go in front of other people, and his mouth hanging just partially open from where he had been cut off mid-speech, as though he honestly could not believe what the lady he was staring back at had just asked of him.  

For fear that he thought she might be joking, she repeated herself.  “You offered to, um, sing me a lullaby while you--”  How had he put it, exactly?  She almost wished her memory would fail her again, just on this specific instance.  “W-While you lay with me in my cot--”  A sudden gasp ate up the remainder of her attempted recitation as a high-pitched whistle suddenly blasted through the room; she jumped and thought that her heart might launch itself straight out through her throat after her words, and Virion reacted similarly, whipping around to watch the steam as it billowed out of his teakettle.  

She jerked her head in its direction as well as it continued to whistle, the little flames she’d put to work around its base twinkling together like a gaggle of snickering gossips.  Virion himself had allowed his intended-to-be-steadying hand to hang in the air near his face; when the pair turned back to look at each other, he drew it even nearer, as if he might use it to physically restrain the delighted grin that was steadily creeping up his face.  But he could not--a sudden barrage of giggles came pouring out of him too, and Endellion sighed, utterly beleaguered.

“Gods, don’t laugh at me, Virion!” she whined, swaying in place before her whole body sunk and she plopped onto the edge of his cot, hanging her head onto her knees.  “It was hard enough just to bring myself to come out here…”  If Virion were less of a gentleman, it occurred to her, he might have something to say about what other things might be ‘hard’ in the situation she appeared to be describing; not that he needed to, seeing as she had already thought it for herself and felt even more embarrassed for letting her thoughts stray that far.

“M-My pardons, Endellion!” Virion managed to say in between the fingers still shielding his vibrant smile, and in between the flurries of giggles still gushing forth out of him in spite of his best efforts to contain himself.  “Ah, my lady!  Please, forgive your Virion for his reaction--I mean you no disrespect, I swear most solemnly.”  He gingerly lifted the teapot off the flames, all of which curled into a sphere at the center of the plate and disappeared into a little puff of smoke with no further fanfare, and the whistling began to dissipate along with them.  “I was merely… momentarily overcome, by such a request--”

“I know it’s ridiculous, but I have to do something.  I don’t even really want the lullaby itself right now.”  She raked her nails through her scalp as she watched him, doing her best to stifle her ever-growing regret at having put this plan into action.  “I doubt the world’s most talented musician could sing me to sleep in this state.  It’s more the principle--I’d rather just talk, I have so much on my mind.  It’s suffocating.”  Virion managed to put a stop to his laughter, then, though his smile remained firmly fixed in place as he began to pour out a drink for each of them into his delicate pair of teacups.  He took in a breath that fully inflated his chest, then breathed it back out in a charmed and cheerful sigh; with that motion, the whole moment had rolled off his shoulders as easily as anything else might have.  

“Yes, yes--discussing our problems is often at least halfway to finding ourselves relieved of them,” he remarked amid the soft sounds of him tinkering with his teaset.  “Very well, then--talk first!  And then my sweet song!  Oh, what fun!  I shall sing to you, my dear, the most mesmerizing of melodies--I shall lull you to comfort with the sweetest whispers I have learned from my travels--or, from my homeland!  Or perhaps I should write you something of your very own?”  Listening to him and watching him at the same time made her cheeks feel hot again, so the tactician looked away.  She rubbed her palms into the blankets she had taken her seat on.  They had been vacant for long enough now that they were cool to the touch, soft, though not particularly unique from the ones in her own bed save for the color.  She liked purple the best whenever it was available, while Virion’s were a dark shade of burgundy.  Also notable was the fact that they seemed to emit a faint perfumey scent whenever she shifted her weight.  Noticing these things did not help her newfound bashfulness much.  “Ah, but perhaps not--no!  Perhaps not, for I would loathe to do anything that might distract me from lending you my most enraptured attention in your time of need.  I will scour my beautiful brain for an appropriate--but already written--melody for you, my dear, and scour only when I might do so without doing you a disservice.”  

Endellion raised her head again as the archer began to return to her, saucer with carefully-balanced cup on top in each hand.  He offered her one when he reached her, and she accepted.  “Thank you, Virion,” she murmured, though she wasn’t entirely sure which action she was thanking him for.  

“As always, my dear,” he said as he stepped back and took his seat across from her on the stool he had offered her before, “it is my deepest honor to play whatever role that I may in lifting your burdens, be it as your personal gamesman, confidant, or caretaker.”  He raised his teacup and dipped his head in a subdued bow in her direction, and she did the same.  Humiliated as she had felt in the aftermath of her request, these last few words brought a smile back to her.  She did not drink immediately, though, instead choosing to peer down at her reflection in the perplexing contents of her cup--although she did her best not to let on how strange it looked to her.  Unlike any tea she’d had before, what lay before her now had a startlingly red hue to it; the distinctly floral aroma she’d been smelling while it brewed had become all the more potent as the steam from the piping hot liquid wafted upwards and kissed her delicately on her cheeks and nose, warming her much more gently there than her blood had before.  She saw the culprit now too:  In addition to the dregs of leaves that had settled to the bottom, there were free-floating flowers of different kinds drifting lazily in her tea and periodically interrupting the picture of her face reflected in the rosy surface.  The sight, the smell, the whole spectacle--it was all distinctly Virion.  

Endellion raised her cup and pushed a stray flower aside with her lips so that she could sip at the edge.  The tea tasted like it smelled:  a bit like flowery water.  But it flowed over her tongue and into her belly and sent waves of comforting warmth out to the furthest parts of her, bringing her whole body to a more cohesive and comfortable equilibrium.  She could get used to the taste, she imagined.

“‘Tis a blend brought with me from one of the further corners of the world,” Virion piped up.  “A far cry from that dreadful commoner’s leaf-water they tend to try to serve to us on the march, don’t you think?  But a man such as I will have no less than the best in his tea.  ”

“It’s certainly a new experience,” Endellion confessed.  “I’ll do my best to appreciate it, although I don’t think I’m quite as discerning as you are.”

“Appreciate it or no,” he replied in turn, raising the little finger on the hand that held the cup as he moved it nearer to his own lips, “I pray only that it brings you some of the same comforts that it does me,” he finished softly.  These words warmed her even more and she went back for another drink with less care than before.  When she slurped loudly on its bright red surface, his little finger flinched, but he breathed out through his nose and took a quieter sip of his own through a charming smile.  “Come, friend.  Tell me of your dreams.”

She gulped down the molten, aromatic liquid one more time to soothe her nerves and set her cup back onto the saucer she’d left on her thighs.  “I have nightmares a lot--violent ones, even,” she admitted, glancing aside.  “But things have never been as bad as they are now.  I’ve had dreams where I hurt people, those are the worst.  But nothing like this--this was a slaughter.”  Uneasily she swirled the remaining liquid contents of her cup as she spoke, following the little flowers with her eye as they turned in tiny circles around one another.  “It was horrific--I was conscious enough of what was happening to try and stop it, but even when I struggled my body just fell apart and this horrible thing started to--i-it got to you, and it just--”  The lady stopped short; the last thing her host needed was to hear the details on how her monstrous dream self had eaten him alive, and frankly she wished to put as much distance between herself and the memory as she could.  “Gods, and it felt so real…  When I woke up I could still feel every bone in my body as if they’d all gone out of place.”  On cue, a dull ache throbbed in her ribs just as it had when she’d first shaken herself awake.  Endellion grimaced; across from her, Virion’s lips had thinned as his imagination filled as many of the details she had avoided going into as he dared to.  Her eye drifted back to her tea.  “I’m worried I’m going to get everyone killed,” she concluded at last.

“Were that our dreams were always prophetic, I would be so fearful myself!” Virion began when she lapsed into silence.  “But I think you worry more than is necessary, my dear--why, just before you woke me this evening I had been dreaming that I had transformed into a little swallow!  And yet here I am:  no bird, and, far more importantly, very much alive.”  

She chuckled between closed lips at the mental image of Virion as a little bird.  It suited him, in an odd way.  “I don’t mean that I think I’m going to literally turn into some kind of horrible monster--”  She paused, then added as an afterthought, “Or at least, I really, really hope that I won’t.  I meant more in general, I think the reason I’m having these dreams is because I’m just…”  The army tactician felt the weight of her title as she proceeded through this idea.  “I’m just terrified that I’m going to lead everyone to their deaths.  If that happens, I may as well be a monster, I suppose.”

“Your Virion is feeling an intense sense of déjà vu, now, Endellion,” he remarked, twirling a finger through his pale hair.  “Your burdens are so heavy that they cannot be so easily lifted by mere words, I imagine, but nonetheless I wish to remind you.”  The archer reached forwards then and, tenderly, he cupped his hands over the backs of hers where they were placed at the edges of her saucer.  “Even in light of your nightmares and your worries, I would gladly place my life in your hands.”  His warm eyes searched hers for a response, then cut back to their intertwined hands.  “May I?” he asked.  

“Huh?”  She blinked, then glanced down at their hands as well with a blush.  “Oh!  Yes, please--thank you.”  During his time responding to her she had drained the remaining liquid contents of her cup.  His hands slipped off from hers and took the saucer from her grasp, and he returned to his feet.  As he strode away to refill their drinks, she picked up the conversation again.  “It was one thing to hear you say that when we were just fighting off the occasional band of marauders or hordes of the undead, but we’re going to war now.”

“Even in light of the war, my stance remains unchanged!” he called back to her.

“I could barely handle bandits and zombies--I’m not equipped to be a war general!”

Virion came back and returned her cup, full to the rim once more with warm, rosy tea and fresh flowers.  He took his seat again with a quiet sigh.  “I fear my words will only fall on deaf ears with your fears as they are at the moment, but they are no less true.  For as long as you stand at the head of this army, come what may, you shall have the Archest Archer standing with you.”  She sipped at her tea and gave him room to elaborate as he saw fit.  “Your concerns are certainly understandable, and even moreso appreciated, but you are a strategist of the highest caliber.  What you may lack in experience, you make up for in unparalleled carefulness and innate cleverness--and I, your noble Virion, will support you in whatever ways that I can!  I am most definitely not lacking in experience of my own.”  He laughed into his own tea in a way that would have sent little ripples through its crimson surface if she could have seen it.  “And my faith in you, I hope, will further root your resolve in seeing us through this blasted war--I do not extend it lightly!  I am quite famous, you know, for being more talented than most men at keeping myself alive.”

She laughed back to him in turn.  “Well, I’m not surprised to hear that--although I wouldn’t have known for certain if you hadn’t told me.  For a man who’s ‘famous’ at anything, I don’t know very much about you, outside of your life here in the Shepherds, I mean.”  Virion’s response to this admission was to glow with delightful pride.

“I do prefer to keep an air of mystique about me,” he smirked.  

“That’s one thing I did know.”  Heavy with the stresses of her fear and embarrassment, she found herself approaching this more lighthearted potential avenue of conversation rather eagerly.  She continued:  “Let’s see, what else…  Your first name is Virion, but your House name is also Virion.”  She raised her visible eyebrow.  “Virion Virion?”  Virion chuckled, but he neither confirmed nor denied, so she went on.  “Birthday:  December tenth.  Favorite colors:  light blue, but also red,” she said, glancing back at his bedsheets.

“I’m growing rather fond of shades of violet these days,” he added.  She blew a puff of breath out from the corner of her mouth so that the tips of her hair hanging in her face lifted against the pull of gravity.  

“I know what sort of person you are, and what sort of tea you like--I know how you fight, I know you enjoy games of all kinds and that you’re silly and clever in equal amounts.”

“Silly can be every ounce as endearing as clever, I’ve found!”  He beamed.  She furrowed her brow now and continued thinking.

“... You’ve incurred a debt so massive doing whatever it is you do outside of the army that it actually pays your debtors to keep you alive.”  This blow struck true and his haughty demeanor collapsed in place of disbelief.

“H-How did you hear of that?” he asked her.  This time it was Endellion’s turn to smirk.

“Freddy Bear and I are getting to be pretty close!  He still swears to Chrom that he doesn’t trust me, but in spite of his best efforts I think I’ve grown on him.”

“‘Freddy Bear’,” Virion repeated weakly.  “And yet he still reminds me daily that he would gladly wear my skin for a stole…”  

“But I don’t know much more than that, I’m afraid, so your ‘air of mystique’ remains otherwise intact.”  She took another drink from her cup, then set it back to its plate and appended a quieter thought.  “I suppose I can’t hold it against you, though--it’s not as though anyone knows much about me, either.”  The archer returned to observing her more quietly throughout her stream of consciousness, leaving her room to speak.  “Name:  Endellion.”

“A heart and soul of fire,” he elaborated on her thought.  She nodded--she had looked up her name as soon as she could to see if it could offer her any clues as to where she had come from.  It had helped guide her to her preferred element of magic, if nothing else.

“House--well, I don’t have a House, at least not one that I can remember.  I’ve tried to remember one, but nothing comes to me.”

“Have you considered giving yourself a surname?” inquired the gentleman.  “It wouldn’t be the same as having a House to call your own, of course, with all its storied histories attached, but there can be great power in choosing such things for yourself.”  She mulled over this thought for a moment.

“... Robin,” she came to.  “I like Robin.  Robe-In,” she added, jingling the edge of her coat and all its bangles.  “Robin-In-Robes.  That’s the only connection to my past that I have--and I think little birds are pretty wonderful.”

“Endellion Robin, then!” he said with a smile.

“Rob-en-dellion,” she laughed in return, then shrugged.  “Birthday:  March the twenty-second.  Or at least, that’s what the roster wrote when I touched it.  It’s strange that a magical book would know such a thing about me when I barely even know myself.  Even stranger still that the book would be a smartass and refuse to tell me anything else,” she added somewhat thinly.  “It gives me little facts about every member of our army whenever someone new approaches it, but you know what it has to say about me?”  She answered herself before he could take a guess:  “I’m ‘The Biggest Mystery of the Group’.”

“Perhaps our odd magical friend merely falls short on ability to tell much more!” Virion offered instead.  “I’d prefer not to think that someone would pour their time into crafting a book that seeks only to be snide to its readers--but there are only so many things that even magic can consistently garner across the full berth of human experiences.  One’s date of birth happens to be a very firm and fixed event, for all things must begin to exist at some point.  It seems to me that it would be fairly simple for a mage--perhaps not even a particularly gifted one--to scribble out a few runes or twirl their hands about and find this information stamped into the very core of a person, somewhere.  Even trees have their rings.”

“Even if that’s the case, it could have at least given me a year.  I could be an old crone--I have no idea.”

“If that happens to be the case, then I certainly hope that I might age as beautifully and gracefully as you have, my dear!”  He pursed his lips for a moment, then very nonchalantly raised his cup back to his lips.  “But, on the subject of these, ah, sweet discoveries that your book has provided you…”

“All it gave me was a few details on your morning routine, Virion,” she said, smiling over her own drink.

“How astonishingly invasive…”  He shook his head.  “No matter, though--at the very least, it has given you a day on which you can celebrate yourself, and quite the apropos choice!  Your birthday places you at the very head of a set of days that, just as your name suggests, align you quite powerfully with the element of fire.”  Endellion perked up in interest.  “Here is the magic which I am most familiar with.  There are schools of fortune-telling that deal in the nature of fate in light of one’s birthday, you see--supposedly, the stars themselves have much to tell in their alignment about one’s associated elements, their personality…”  Another sip, and then a smirk.  “What romances they should seek…”  

Endellion rolled her eye and returned to the task of dredging up what few details she could remember about herself.  “As I was saying…”  He sighed when she did not take his bait, but did not interrupt.  “I know half my name, my birthday, purple is my favorite color now if it wasn’t before.  I know I’ve lost an eye, somehow.”  She pushed aside the long part of her bangs to expose an inordinarily pale iris and the mangled scars of long-burned flesh spread over most of the right side of her face, then let them fall back in place to cover it all up again.  “Although I don’t know how it happened--I’m sure there’s a rousing story there.”  As casually as she had done this, it occurred to her then that severe disfiguring facial scarring might be less interesting and more disturbing, or even repulsive to someone as devoted to the concept of ‘beauty’ as Virion was.  She was almost embarrassed, but was instead more relieved than she would have liked to admit as he seemed entirely unfazed.  Then again, she had likely shown him those scars a hundred times prior without realizing it while idly toying with her hair as she puzzled over their games.  But she had never seen him flinch away from her.  

Again, she wracked what little memory she had, and then looked down again at her coat draped snugly around her figure, decked in gold and blue and pink eyes, and stitched and re-stitched together a hundred times over, if appearances were anything to go by.  

“I know that I’m Plegian.”

This note was one that they hung on.  Virion had an uncanny knack for lightening the load that she carried, for calming her down and for making her feel more secure even in the most trying of situations, but in spite of his best efforts the war with Plegia loomed and engulfed them with all the hot updrafts and chilly downpours and thunder and lightning of an inescapable hurricane.  A lull in the tension was only the eye of the storm--it always, inevitably, hit again.  The strategist shifted her weight from one side of her body to the other, then rubbed her ankles together and took another small sip of her tea.  It was starting to turn cool from being exposed to the open air for so long.

“Does it pain you, my lady,” Virion began again in a gentler tone of voice, “to have to raise your tomes against your own people?”  She bit at her bottom lip.  Here was a question she’d spent a long time thinking about on her own.

“No,” she answered finally.  Then she reconsidered.  “Well, it’s complicated.”  Virion nodded.  “I doubt that I was some kind of noble, given these clothes.  And I sincerely doubt that I was one of Gangrel’s--I have a feeling he’d have had a little more to say to me when we met at that fake parléy of his back at the border, if that were the case.”  She sneered, wrinkling the bridge of her nose and exposing the starts of her teeth.  Their meeting with the Mad King had been brief, but he had accomplished a lot to be ashamed of in what little time he had offered them.  “If anything, being Plegian only makes me want to dethrone him even more.  I’ve read my fair share of history books and talked to Chrom and the others--the last war with Plegia almost tore Ylisse apart, but it left Plegia in ruins.”

Across from her, Virion had set his cup down now; while he still wore a calm expression on his pale features, the lines in his face had turned sharper and there was something flashing just beneath the surface of his dark eyes as she spoke.  He chimed in low, “It was only in ruins that such a venomous creature was able to spin a web to hang in.”

“And yet he thinks sending bandits up to Regna Ferox posing as Chrom, torching whole villages on both sides of the border, this is what his people want from him?  His generals, maybe, but half the soldiers he throws at us are shaking in their sollerets.”  The longer she dwelled on this subject, the hotter her temper flared; all her nervousness regarding the war melted into anger towards the man who had put them in such a position in the first place.  “Some of them could be schoolchildren!”  

“The Mad King acts as though he speaks for all his people, but he cares for them no more than spiders care for the unfortunate moths at their many feet:  Useful only to him for as long as he is able to drain them dry.”

“He’s more butcher than king.”  She closed her eyes again and engulfed the image in her mind of the cackling clown king in fire to be rid of it, and then his killer queen as well for good measure.  But they were replaced by the various faces of the terrified soldiers the Shepherds had struck down so far--these, she couldn’t bring herself to burn twice, even metaphorically.  When she opened her eyes again, the sudden burst of flames had subsided to coals.  The only thing burning now was the dull ache of tiredness in a person too tired to go to sleep, right behind her eyes.  “I don’t know how long I’ve been Plegian, though, if that makes sense.  I don’t have the accent--I don’t sound much like the people we’ve been fighting, at least.”

“Mm,” Virion hummed thoughtfully.  “There are times when I hear the faintest shadows of places I have traveled to in your maiden’s voice, perhaps Plegian at times, but just as easily as many others--whole continents, even--and at others, places I have never heard at all.  Your accent may be even worldlier than I.”

“But I have my coat.”  Endellion set her cup--empty once again--and saucer beside her on the cot and carefully slid the thick, world-weary garment off from her shoulders.  Once she had wiggled her way out of it, she turned it around to show the most detailed parts to the archer.  “It’s the only thing I had on me when I was found--not even a purse or a bag of some kind.  Just this coat, with pockets full of books.”  Virion lifted one of the sleeves to further investigate the fuchsia embroidery that peered curiously up at him; as he moved it, the coat fell more open with its interior still facing in Endellion’s direction.  Typically invisible to people looking at her from the outside, it was now easy for her to spot the little gold letters stitched into the pink in a language that, if she had ever known it, was now entirely alien to her.  

She had gotten them translated the moment she felt brave enough endure the worst--as expected, Plegian; archaic Plegian, as a matter of fact, had said Miriel.  Thankfully their translation was something soothing, albeit maybe a little nonsensical, rather than threatening.  The more astute mage’s voice repeated in her head in all its factual pragmatism:  “‘Shield this child away from misfortune’s many wings’--though my studies in archaic Plegian are deplorably rudimentary; perhaps a more acquainted cryptographer would elect to define the first few words along the lines of a conjugated ‘to keep safe,’ but I prefer to deal in the literal--”  She had elected not to pursue the avenue any further.  

“It must have meant something to me.”  Virion nodded agreeably then gently returned the sleeve to its position swaying at the coat’s side.  With that, she pulled it back to herself and let it drape over her backwards, the arms around her waist like a warm hug.  She thought of the soldiers again.  “And I see myself in them, sometimes, in the Plegian soldiers--no one’s recognized me yet, thankfully,” she amended, “so they aren’t family I don’t think.  Gods, that would be horrible, if somebody realized who I was right as I was about to bring the fire down on them…”  She quickly shook the thought from her head before it could linger too long.  “But their features, I know that we share some of them.  Little things like the shapes of some of their eyes, or their noses.”  She prodded the tip of her own for emphasis.  “Again, nothing conclusive, though.  It doesn’t bother me, usually--honestly, it doesn’t.”  She wrapped her arms around the hood and hugged it closer to her nightdress.  “No matter where I came from, I know where I belong now.  But there are times…”

“I think,” the gentleman said, “that all our comrades in this army would agree that you belong with us as well, no matter your origins.  Even your ‘Freddy Bear,’ for all his protests.”

She smiled, though only briefly.  “There are times when I wonder where my other family is, if there even is any.”  

“I imagine any tender soul would…” he replied, watching her carefully.

“It’s the ‘not knowing’ that gets to me the most, I think.  It’s so hard, sometimes, to exist for… what, thirty years?  At the minimum.  But I have no memory of any of it.  I could have family--parents, or worse, children.”  A pang shot through her heart and stomach at that idea.  “A spouse?”  Virion’s face mirrored the way that she felt.  “If there’s anyone I left behind…  I’d have no way of finding out.  I don’t even know where to start looking--there’s no simple way to look everywhere all at once.”

They fell quiet again.  After a moment, the man bridged the gap between them with his arm and placed his hand on hers, as he had done earlier.  Instinctively, this time, Endellion turned hers over and squeezed it.  With his other, he gestured towards her empty teacup.  “Might I take that from you?”

“Ah--yeah, thank you.”  She pulled her hand away and handed him the cup, taking one last look at the petals and damp dregs of tea leaves huddled into a pile on the bottom.  “Could you tell my fortune with those?” she asked, pointing into the cup as it passed between hands.  “Like I said before, at this point, I’m willing to try just about anything for a little peace of mind.”

Virion sighed regretfully.  “I’m afraid my powers of divination extend only to the future, my dear, not to the past.  The very vague and generic, but most probable future.  Specifics are left up to interpretation, or to those who practice the darker arts more devoutly than I.”  She sighed in turn, leaning her elbows on her knees.

“Well, it was worth asking.”

“I pray you’ll forgive me for it--my failings are few and far between, but perhaps they carry more weight for that fact.”  He took their cups back to the crate where he’d left the remainder of his teamaking supplies.

“I knew it was a long-shot.  But I appreciate everything that you’re doing for me, I can’t thank you enough for letting me ramble like this…”  She scuffed the toes of her boots against the floor and took to listening to the quiet tinkling of the cups and the tin box, then his footsteps.  After a moment he spoke again, though his voice came now from the opposite side of the room.

“Endellion, may I be bold for a moment?”  Endellion raised her head and turned around to see him.  He had returned his things to their previous storage space, but now remained standing at his shelf where he peered back at her from over his shoulder.

“You’ve never asked permission before,” she replied, craning her neck to see what he was doing.  His hand was resting atop something else leather-bound, his fingers drumming a silent rhythm on its reddish surface.  Another fire tome?  No--as he took it into his hands, a long, leather strap followed it off the shelf and dangled into the air.  It was a bag, one full and taut enough to pass for a book at first glance.  

He carried his parcel back and stooped over the cot from the opposite side to offer it to her.  “Bolder than usual, my dear--bolder than, perhaps, even your noble Virion should be, but I feel as though there is something that I must show you.  Ah--do take care,” he added as she reached for it, “It’s rather thick.”

At his advice, Endellion braced herself as the bag passed between their hands, then let it drop onto the bed beside her.  She glanced back to the archer for more conclusive permission to investigate its contents, and he nodded; she then made short work of the little gold buttons and clasps that had been binding it snugly closed, and peeked inside.

“Oh!”  

Interior exposed, it looked even more like a tome now than it had when still closed:  The bag was packed full to bursting with a mess of pages--no, not pages, but envelopes of all colors tied tightly together not unlike pages, she realized as she strained to get a grip on them, and then carefully wiggled them free of the leather pouch.  The pouch itself collapsed the moment its papery interior was removed, and she disregarded it in favor of the prize she had extracted.

“Virion, what is all this?” she asked, turning the mass of paper over in her hands; they had all been tied together with a thin silver ribbon that the lamplight nearby made sparkle.

“Letters, Endellion--a great many of them,” Virion replied; he had stepped back from the bed again and taken up residence by the strangely-shaped blanketed object she’d noticed upon first coming in.  “They are yours to look through, if you so wish.”  

Not one to deprive her curiosity, the tactician pulled the knot undone on the string and allowed the letters to breathe.  She kicked off her boots and tucked her knees up onto the bed with the rest of her, spreading her coat over her legs like a blanket, and the thick pile of envelopes out over the cot like a duvet.  Then she began to pick through them, her silver eye now glittering as much with anticipation as the ribbon had been with reflections.  The envelope exteriors were mostly indistinct and unmarked, though the one she picked off the top of the pile was faintly pink in color.  It smelled of charcoal when she opened it, and when she pulled the letter itself out she could see that the edges and a good bit of the bottom half had been burned away.  Her first instinct was to think Virion had done it to keep the latter parts a secret, but it appeared to have been done by the letter’s original author, as the words--written in a tidy and twirly script nearer the top--bent around the fried edges and crammed themselves into the remaining bottom corner above the signature:  Cherche & Minerva, it said.  But this was the only part she could read--lovely as the handwriting was, the letter was written in a language entirely incomprehensible.  Endellion frowned, then tucked it under the edge of its pink envelope and set it aside.

The other letters were similar (albeit with fewer burns, for the most part).  Each one was a curious puzzle piece, making the situation even more convoluted with each new addition, foreign languages in rainbow ink, all impossible to understand except for their signatures:  Cherche, Minerva (besides the signature, this one was mostly scrawl, ink splatters, and a few concerning puncture marks), Maman, Ivanova, Cherche and Minerva, Maya, Angelique, Maman again, and names that were unreadable for the language they were written in was so vastly different from the one she could remember how to speak.  

“I… don’t understand,” she admitted at last.  “I suppose that’s why you didn’t mind me digging through your mail…”  Virion let out a faint chuckle, looking back at her over his shoulder again, then punctuated his laughter with a sigh.  

“My travels have taken me to all corners of the world, my sweet--to places yet untouched even by this motley army we’ve found ourselves both tied up in!  And in all my travels, I have made a good many… friends,” was the word he settled on, although the way it rang in his voice made her question if that would have been his first choice to describe these people with.  “Associates, if you will.  Or, in more business-like terms, you might call them ‘connections’.”  He pinched a corner of the blanket hanging over the tall rounded silhouette he stood beside, rubbing it between his finger and thumb.  “There are many benefits to maintaining such a vast and well-dispersed network, you see.  One example of such would be that I am able to, on occasion, call in various ‘favors’--in this case,” in a grandiose sweep, he threw back the blanket halfway over itself to show her the empty iron birdcage beneath it, “the favor of seeking information.”  

She considered the implications for a moment.  “You exchange enveloped letters with people all over the world… using birds?”

“My birds are specially…  Er, details, dear lady!”  He waved the half-question away with an idle twitch of his hand and covered the cage once more.  Endellion laughed under her breath and selected the next envelope.

“Oh!  Here’s one that I can read,” she noted aloud as she spied the first bit of familiar language on the page inside; she paused and looked back to her host again before she began to parse the things it said, however.  “If that’s all right with you.”

Virion stepped nearer and leaned over to see which one she had unearthed.  “Ah--by all means.  I did offer them to you for a reason, after all.”  

The inscrutable languages had starved her curiosity for long enough now that she tore into this one voraciously, sizing up the page as quickly as she could retain the information printed on it.

> Dearest Virion, how funny of you to write me out of the blue like this, although I suppose that is typically how you operate.  How is my blade treating you?  Assuming you haven’t sold it off in exchange for some trinket to impress some other pretty girl.  Perhaps the one you’ve asked me to look for?  Haha!  I only jest, darling.  It actually quite pains me to have to tell you I’ve turned up nary a thing on your ‘lavender-locked lady.’

These three words burned throughout every strand of her hair.

> I did my best to decipher that purple prose of yours and sent her description to every associate I have on wing. No fewer than thirty letters, I assure you, and all of them returned to me empty-handed.  I’m afraid this lady love you’re seeking is practically a ghost.  Are you sure you didn’t dream her?  Teasing again, darling.  She must tread lightly, though, wherever she goes.  I’ll inform you if anything changes.  You should drop by sometime, if you’re spending your days in Ylisse.  We have so much to catch up on!  My husband would just adore the chance to meet you, I’m sure.  Yours in everlasting friendship, Calpurnia Claive.

Virion had lapsed into silence to give her space to indulge.  She read it again, two or three more times, staring in disbelief down at the paper for she honestly could not fathom that what she was reading was truly there.  

“Virion?”  Endellion looked up to him again and saw that he stood now with his hands at his chest, his fingertips pressed together very nearly nervously.  She fought for the words to express what she was feeling and found them all lacking.  “What is--did you…”

“They are all akin to that one, my lady,” he began to explain, and gestured at the pile of envelopes strown around her.  “Each letter begets a plethora of others, at my request.  And yet they all return as vacant of information as they were when they set out, I fear.”  

She blinked at him, still wrestling with how, exactly, this revelation made her feel.  “... Why did you do this?  Why were you looking for information about me?”

He picked at the length of curled, starlight blue hair hanging over his right shoulder, averting his sunset eyes for only a moment, then turned them back to her.  “Because it is the right thing to do, my lady.  Because who else but I is equipped to do what I have attempted to do here?  Chrom may travel the length of his continent and back, but he keeps the friends he makes at his breast.  I know of no other man, or woman, or otherwise but I who possesses the ability to so easily send a message that travels to all far corners of the world, and sends others at every stop that it makes.”  He quickly shot out a comment in an entirely different direction after this, however, as though he were suddenly second-guessing himself in his belief in the righteousness of his actions:  “I extend the humblest apology that I can muster, if I have strayed where it was never my place to tread--”

“N-No, you haven’t done anything wrong,” she stammered back.  She allowed the hand clutching Calpurnia Claive’s letter to drift back to the bed.  “... Why didn’t you tell me about these before now?” she asked after another moment.

Virion sighed again.  “I had hoped to reveal the nature of my plot in a display that would include wonderful news for you, Endellion.  I hardly wish to be the one who must tell you that…  you seem to have no one looking for you.”  She flinched; he winced as she did.  “A-Although, these letters are hardly conclusive!  They are… merely heavily implicit.”  His shoulders wilted like a flower pressed under the hottest rays of the sun.  “Although, if it is the ‘not knowing’ that so twists the dagger in you, then perhaps I should have waited a bit longer before revealing this project to you.  I hoped that, perhaps, if nothing else, through process of elimination--”

“No.”  He stopped himself when she spoke again.  “You’re…  You’re right.”  She forced herself to keep breathing, but was unable to lift her gaze back off from the surface of the letter again, even as she continued.  “If there was someone out there for you to find, then, I’m sure, with this many of your affiliates looking…”  She blinked, and the burning behind her eye flared up so suddenly that the air in her throat went up into a little hiccup instead of another word.  Hot tears pooled in her visible eye--the scars covering the other one had turned its tear ducts to deserts--and streamed down to the tip of her nose, threatening to drip onto Virion’s letters.

“Endellion…”

She quickly wiped the tears away, smearing them over the back of her hand so that her odd, spotted birthmark looked as though it was crying on behalf of her damaged eye.  “I-I’m sorry,” she managed to speak in between sniffs.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” Virion replied, balanced on his toes as though torn halfway between offering her space or offering her his arm.  She composed herself as best she could before he was forced to make the decision.  

“This was so kind of you to do, regardless of what you were able to find out.  I’m just… overwhelmed, is all.”  Endellion took a deep, heavy breath, to steady herself and banish the last of the clouds still threatening to consume her again.  She leaned back on the palms of her still-damp hands and stared at the shadows cast by the lamp light onto the ceiling, and where they disappeared into darkness at the deepest crevice at the tent’s peak.  “Maybe I don’t have anyone that I left behind, but…  At least no one is waiting for me.  I meant it, what I said before--that was the hardest thing for me to come to terms with.  And it’s not as though I’m alone,” she added, managing to send a smile in his direction.  A weak, but genuine one, even through the stains of her tears.  “I have the Shepherds, after all.  I have Chrom and Lissa, who’ve taken me in off the street and treated me like family even when common sense dictates that they never should have woken me in the first place.  I have Frederick, even if he still has common sense--”

“But it is waning by the day!” Virion chimed in softly, smiling back at her, just slightly.

“I have Miriel, and Sumia, and Sully and Stahl, Lon’qu--even if he won’t come near me, he seems nice--and Maribelle and even little Ricken now, he’s just darling.  Oh, and Kellam too, of course,” she added as an afterthought.  “And I have you, and…”  The tactician shifted herself to turn more fully in his direction again.  “Strange, and foppish, and ridiculous as you are, you’re a big enough personality that you alone might have been enough to make up for however many years I must have spent alone.”  In spite of the beginning of her description, the archer’s smile glowed with all the warmth and the coziness of a home hearth.  “You along with the others definitely do.  I wouldn’t trade you for anyone in the world.”

“Nor would we trade you, Endellion.  Not for all the gold and gems in this world, let alone the people.  You are the heart and soul of this entire army, I daresay--with some fanfare from yours truly!”  He amended his statement with an air of reluctance that made her giggle:   “And perhaps some from our general Chrom, I suppose, just a garnish.”

“And I could never abandon any of you.”  She had never intended to, but in light of all they had discussed it seemed important to state it.  “No matter how terrified I am, or how underqualified I feel--I intend to stand with you and the Shepherds for as long as you’ll have me.”

“I cannot envision a world in which we would not have need of you, my dear!”  She braced herself on one hand and wiped her eye again.  Filled with renewed vigor, Virion turned and flitted back to his things as though a new thought had suddenly occurred to him.  “My dear, tactician that you are--how closely have you studied those maps of yours?”

“Hm?” she asked, removing her hand again so that she could keep him in her periphery.  In the meanwhile, she began picking up the letters she’d opened and tucking them back into their envelopes properly to tidy up the bedspace while the archer dug about in his shelves.  “Pretty closely.  It’s difficult to wake up in a world you can’t remember anything about--I’ve mostly stuck to the Ylissean continent, though, due to the campaigning.  I’d say I know Ylisse, most of Regna Ferox, and Plegia like the back of my hand.  Why?”

Virion responded with a bit of triumphant laughter, either in response to her admission or to the fact that he seemed to have found what he was looking for:  another rolled up something-or-other, significantly larger than his Fire tome lamp lighter or even his makeshift chessboard tablecloth, which he then carried back to her with a gallant stride.  She hastily stacked the envelopes back as best she could into the order she’d been given them in and retrieved the silver string to bind them together while Virion climbed into the cot on his knees.  Endellion pushed the stack of envelopes and the bag to the foot of the bed while Virion readjusted himself into a sitting position and unrolled the large piece of parchment--a map, as expected--for them to share.  The tactician took the western end.

“A pity, my dear, truly a pity!” the gentleman said with another chuckle.  “Tis a pity that your sights have not yet wandered to Ylisse’s oceanic neighbors!”  He reached his arm across her body and pointed to a spot near the center of the landmass under her thumb--Valm was the continent; the spot Virion was pointing to was labeled as “Rosanne.”  It was only when she peered more closely at it that she realized the slight indentations into the parchment tracing its borders and name suggested the country had been meticulously penned in by hand.  

Endellion looked back to him with a widened eye.  “Is this…?”

“Indeed it is, my dear!  The land of Rosanne, where beauty is the number one export.  My beloved homeland,” he said with a grin.  With a grin of her own, Endellion rounded back on the map and more eagerly thrust her nose into it, inspecting the hand-drawn borders of the little country like the speckles of light in a pretty stone.

“This is where you’re from?  Rosanne…”  She tasted their tea from before again.  Visions of fields rolling with flowers, awash in colors blue, and red, and shades of violet, took form in her mind alongside the rivers she traced as they wound beside the country’s borders.  To the eastern end she pictured deep gullies snug between enormous purple mountains, speckled with flames and sunlight scattering through the leathery wings of dragons soaring in between them.  She pointed to this spot on the map.  “You have wild wyverns?”

“Wyverns are as common as kittens in the land of Rosanne!” he replied rather proudly.

“Although maybe not as cuddly,” she murmured.  Plegia had dragons too--she and Virion had toppled a pair of them from a safe distance in their last battle.  Later that evening, she had carved a few wooden wyverns for Virion to command from his side of their strategy games and then suffered an unceremonious defeat at his hands over a gambit with one of them.  Suddenly it made sense why he could handle them so well.  “It’s hard for me to imagine someone snuggling up to a hulking, fire-breathing lizard.”  

“And yet, such an idea is hardly strange to me!” replied Virion.  When she failed to stifle a slightly incredulous snicker, he went on:  “My dearest and most devout vassal, Cherche, has allowed one to sleep in her bed since we were but children!”  This made her giggle even more.  Could such a person actually exist?  Coming from a country where this was a common practice certainly sounded like something Virion would manage to accomplish.  But a word he had used in passing gave her pause.

“Wait, what was that about a ‘vassal’?”

“Hm?” Virion raised his eyebrows, beaming impishly.  “Ah yes, my vassal.  I was born a wee babe in the Land of Rosanne, as I have said, and I am also its duke.”

Endellion jolted upright, taking her half of the map with her.  “You’re a duke?”

“Had I failed to mention that?” he asked mildly.  “I suppose it slipped my mind.”

“Somehow I doubt that’s what happened…”

The archer--well, the duke--now laughed again, raising a hand and giving her a playfully defeated half-bow.  “Alas!  You have caught me.  This was meant to be my great unmasking all along, my dear.  Behold!”  He placed the hand to his chest, just beneath the cravat he had yet to remove, and bowed to her once again.  “I present to you--Duke Virion, of House Virion, Archest of Archers, and most beloved benevolent ruler of Rosanne.”  Endellion wasn’t sure if she should try another curtsy from her sitting position or not.  “Is the lady intrigued?” he cooed.

“I’m intrigued as to how your people must feel about you being gone for so long,” she replied, genuinely concerned.  “Don’t they worry about you?  And you have to be worried about them, aren’t you?”

“Mm…  Yes, you are certainly not wrong, my dear.”  He reached for her side of the parchment and she relinquished it to him; he began to curl its edges inwards.  “Your instincts are, as always, perfectly on the mark.  Not a day passes in which I don’t worry for the state of my people, with my being so far from home.”  Once he had finished rolling the parchment back into a coil, he set it onto the floor at the side of the bed.  “But do the people of Ylisse not worry for Chrom whenever he sets out on his many expeditions?  Though he is not currently its acting ruler, he and young Lissa are still of royal blood.  And yet Chrom, Lissa, and myself all know as our respective peoples know:  There are times when we are needed elsewhere.”

Endellion crossed her hands into her lap, her concerns still not entirely assuaged.  She pursed her lips in thought.  “Yes, but Chrom and Lissa set out on expeditions on behalf of their own country, generally speaking.  You’re mixed up in somebody else’s war--and on an entirely different continent.”

“‘Mixed up,’ perhaps, but hardly unwillingly.”  Now she frowned.  “There are benefits, I think you know, to offering yourself to fight on behalf of another person’s land.”  

That was true.  “Like how we just served as champions on behalf of Flavia?”

“Indeed, my lady!” he said, sounding pleased with her.

“So you joined the Shepherds to forge alliances?”  She nodded to herself as the concept unfolded in her mind’s eye.  “But, there’s a lot more at stake here than in a tournament.  You’re putting yourself in mortal danger in the hopes that you’ll bring home powerful allies for your people…  That does sound like something a duke should do, although I’m not sure how many of them actually would.”

“Right again, my dear Endellion.  This duke is one who will do what he must for his people.  But, as I have said before, I am quite famous for my ability to remain in-tact in perilous situations!  The danger is nothing that I would not willingly engage to protect my homeland.  And I have secured myself a great number of alliances in doing so, have I not?”  He began to recline, resting his back and bare shoulders against the wall of the tent, and his lower back against a pillow, then gestured lazily to the foot of the bed where his bag and pile of envelopes lay.  “Seeking allies has also allowed me to expand my information network as thoroughly as I have.”  As he relaxed, Endellion found herself doing the same.  She stretched her legs out towards the end of the cot and leaned onto her side, propping herself up on an elbow near a second pillow.  Virion’s lips curled into another playful smirk.  “And if those reasons alone are not enough to carry me on my journey, there is, of course, always the ever-present possibility that I may find myself a bride to bring home to my land alongside our many allies!”  He chuckled to himself; Endellion lowered her eyelid and regarded her companion with as much of a deadpan as she could muster.

“I did take note that your ‘information network’ seems to be entirely made up of ladies, from what little I could read.”  She prodded the letters with her foot.  Virion’s ego deflated again.

“M-My lady, you wound me!” he balked.  “I assure you, I have only the noblest of intentions among my cohorts…”  The lady’s face flushed violet.

“I-I’m so sorry,” she cut in, “That came out a lot more callous than I meant for it to--I didn’t mean to suggest--I just meant that, um.”  The nobleman beside her sighed, shaking his head.  “I’m not sure there’s a way for me to explain this without sounding rude.”  She swallowed.  “I’m sorry--and after you’ve done so much for me tonight…”

“Think nothing of it, my dear,” he sighed again.  “I consider your plainspokenness to be one of your many charms.”  

“I suppose I’m just… curious,” she decided, bunching up the hood of her coat in her left hand.  “I realize you’re not wife-hunting first and foremost, even if you’ll lead people to believe otherwise, but… that’s just the thing.  Do you ever worry that, if you really do find someone you want to marry, she might not take you seriously?  With all the flirting and your penchant for ‘hollow flattery’ and such, I mean.”  

“Hollow flattery is another staple of Rosanne culture, you should know!”

“That much I could guess--but even still, I heard you only waited long enough to learn Sully’s name before you popped the question.”  A faint rosy color rose into the archer’s cheeks.

“Ah, yes, I suppose that is one way to describe how it happened…”  His thin frown lasted only a moment longer, though, before a bright and self-satisfied smirk had returned to his face.  “And yet, sweet Sully has had a ring on her finger since well before either you or I joined the Shepherds, has she not?  How strange!”

She lifted her head from her hand again, curiosity further piqued by this new insinuation.  “Are you implying that you asked her, knowing that she’d say no?”  Virion’s teeth sparkled rather deviously.  “Because you knew that she’d say no?”

“Correct as usual, my sweet!  At the rate of your progress, soon you’ll be seeing through all my schemes before they’ve been enacted!”  She started to laugh--she wanted to ask him why he would do such a thing, but he took her laughter for the question before she was able to ask it and went onwards.  “I feel it is always wise to keep a handful of tricks tucked away in my sleeves.  When I met our dear lady knight, what I knew of her was that she was riding out to meet members of an army seeking new recruits.  Making a good first impression is always important…”  He brushed his fingers through his hair and curled it back around his hand and onto his shoulders.  “But at times… it can be even more important to allow other people to misjudge you as a buffoon.  After all, I knew very little of the nature of this army before taking my place in it.  If our current comrades had seen fit to turn against me, better that they vastly underestimate the man they turn against, if he so wishes to escape with his skin.”

Endellion found herself utterly baffled, and yet at the same time entirely delighted by the unpacking of his absurd plans.  Her amusement broiled in her very core and rushed to the surface, warm and bubbly, and with such force that she could no longer hold it in.  She flopped her head back onto the pillow to allow the giggles to rocket skywards while she clutched her coat to her chest in her best effort to contain herself, for laughing so hard made her feel though she might explode.  The laughter wracked her ribs, and her heart throbbed hotly underneath them.  Over the course of their conversation on this long night, she had felt it pulsate with all her fears, her tears, and the cold and the heat brought on by each of them.  She had missed how it felt to laugh until she cried, even in just these last few hours since jolting awake from her last nightmare, but that terror had ebbed to the back of her mind and, at long last, evaporated.  She covered her face to swallow the last of the snickers and then peeked between her fingers up at the man sitting beside her.  Virion was laughing too, though more quietly, and as he beamed down at the lady beaming up at him, he looked more proud of himself than he had all evening.  

“I-I’m sorry!” she hiccuped between a small laughtershock.  “I just can’t believe it--or I shouldn’t be able to, but I can!  That’s what gets to me.”

“You know better than any other how I strategize, my lady.  I do most often play ‘fast and loose’ with what some men would call fire, if they had not met you.”

“So it really is all strategy?” she asked.  “All the ‘sweet nothings’ you follow girls around with, and the flamboyance?”

He chuckled.  “Not entirely, my dear!  But yes, it is with some intent that I allow others to make their own judgements as to which aspects of my personality they consider to be the most paramount.”

She shook her head from her recumbent position, allowing some of her pale purple hair to splay out over the pillow.  “That explains why your first response to seeing someone sneaking into your tent in the dead of night was to draw your bow, rather than anything else…”

Virion idly fluffed up the ruffles tied to his neck.  “Erm, yes, I suppose it would.”

“Gods…  You taught yourself magic so that you don’t have to carry matches, you snuggle with dragons, you fight in other people’s wars and constructed a secret mailing system that barely seems physically possible, and you flirt and act like a dandy as part of a strategy so that people assume that you’re just full of yourself and completely underestimate how clever you really are.”  The lady rolled onto her side again, but left her head resting on the pillow this time.  “And you are clever--you’re beyond ridiculous, Virion, but you’re a genius.”  

“I am well aware, my dear lady!  Why, clever as I am in my tactical planning, I would nearly call myself strateg-est of strategists!  Nearly…”  He closed his lips and smiled down at the woman lying beside him.  “If not for one other person.”

Endellion closed her eye as her face began to grow warm again.  “Thank you, Virion, that’s very flattering.”

“I assure you, my lady, there is nothing hollow about this flattery.”  

She opened her eye once more and gazed up at the archer with curious interest.  “Why are you telling me all this, though?” she asked.  “After all these months of secrecy and ‘mystique,’ what made you decide to leave it all to the wayside now?”

He hummed thoughtfully.  “I suppose it is because you remarked on how little of me you know, and I decided that I wished to change that.  There is a value in secrecy, yes, but I had taken for granted the fact that it was within my power to hold secrets at all.”  The flush in her dark skin deepened further.

“You really feel that bad for me, huh?” she asked with a thin smile.

“But no!” the nobleman responded, aghast.  “On the contrary, my lady, this is no act of mere pity.”  He laced his long fingers into one another and rested them atop the bottom half of his torso before he spoke again in a gentle voice.  “My words, however sweet they may be, alone lacked the strength to lift the burdens weighing onto your heart as I told you earlier this evening.  But the trust that I claim to bestow in you is no mere profession of pretty words.”  He turned his head and his rose petal eyes--flecked with gold from the dwindling lamp light--slightly more toward her and she craned her neck to match his gaze.  “After this long and winding tale we’ve shared, my sweet, I offer you the keys to my undoing, as a token of my faith in you.  They are yours to do what you will with, as am I.  Tis a privilege very few are privy to, my dear.”  Virion finished off with a smile as warm and welcoming as first starlight after a long and draining day.  Endellion drew a breath as if to speak, but found herself unable to translate the full spectrum of thoughts and feelings in her chest into words.  There were no words for it.

She exhaled the breath through her nose and in place of speaking bumped her forehead against his elbow, hoping that the heat that briefly passed between them as she did would transmit what her voice could not.  The lady drew back and relaxed her neck again, though her gaze lingered still on the gentleman’s affectionate smile.  “I suppose there’s no room left for me to doubt myself now, is there?”

“How my heart soars to hear you speak with such conviction!” he replied with a dandy laugh.

“Your support is invaluable, Virion,” she continued.  “I can’t thank you enough--for everything.”  After a beat, she murmured “Thank you,” once again.

“Ah!” he picked up again.  “But perhaps I could elaborate a bit further on myself, if you will allow me?”  Endellion nodded as best she could while still lying down and so he spurred onwards.  “Oh, what fun!  I fear that confessing all my secrets is somewhat addictive, after keeping them so well-concealed for so long.  Where to begin…  Ah, yes!  You should know, as I am sure you have discerned already, that while I may at times play up certain aspects of my personality, I am not a dishonest man.”  

She slipped her hands beneath the oversized hood of her coat and drew it up under her chin so that the folds of blue and purple fabric covered more of her neck and shoulders.  The spot on her forehead where she’d touched his arm still tingled, just faintly.  Now that she was no longer making an effort to watch his face, she found herself at eye-level with his crossed hands, rising and falling ever so often as he breathed in between words.  

“I am a gifted and creative strategist, yes, but I am also a poet, as well as a romantic, and many other things.  I am inspired by beauty, and compelled to tell those who inspire me that they do so.  It is in the nature of my people to do so!  Be it through honeyed words, flattery, sweet whispers, or so on and so forth.  They may be mistaken for one another at times, but they each serve entirely different purposes, you will find.  Flattery is not inherently empty, although that does have its place now and then…”

The light of the lamp was beginning to fade now--it cast curious but friendly little shadows over the archer’s pale skin, but even as it dimmed it still looked warm.  It felt warm--she felt warm, she realized, under the folds of her coat, among the red blankets, and with the presence of another living person lying beside her.  Hhe continued to conduct his melodious soliloquy.  Her eye fell closed as she listened.

“This theoretical bride I spoke of before, I believe will be able to tell sincerity in romance from fleeting words!  Furthermore, I believe that your noble Virion himself will know her from all others when the time comes.  There will be no mistaking the truest love of my life--my most enamored, my soulmate!  Oh!  She will know of love in ways that no other has ever known.  Artist that I am, I will paint her image into the very stars themselves and they will be honored to have her among them.  I will bring her stories back to my people and she at my side, they will call her more than a mere duchess--a goddess!  Her song shall be sung at every hearth in home on Rosanne soil for all of…  Ah…”

His voice grew softer.

“It would seem the lady has finally drifted back to her slumber…  I wonder if you heard any of that.  I suppose it is better that you rest, though.  A pity I could not sing to you--I had just decided on the perfect lullaby to treat you to.  Perhaps another time, then…  Sleep tight, my dear.”

* * *

There was a faint buzz of activity right at her ear.  Endellion stirred--her coat was tangled around her waist and her nose was planted firmly into the folds of a pillow that she had somehow managed to wrap her whole body around in the night.  She furrowed her brow and listened harder, though as the dregs of sleepiness still drifted around her brain she found it hard to discern exactly what she was hearing.  Was someone making a ruckus outside?  No--Frederick had sound-proofed the tents so thoroughly that she was sure she’d never hear it even if the whole camp was up in arms and screaming.  The sound was coming from elsewhere.

Blearily, she opened her functional silver eye (thankfully facing up where she lay, and the charred side of her face pressed into the pillow) and hunted the room for the source.  She found it quickly:  Virion was seated at a mirror he’d uncovered atop one of his crates, and was humming a tune to himself as he brought a brush down through his long, silvery blue hair.  

“Au claire de la lune, mon amie Cherche, prête-moi ta plume…”

She mentally worked through a bit of physics; from where he was sitting, the mirror shouldn’t show her reflection.  The tactician shifted her body, quietly as she could, to better see him.  He had carried one of the stools from his table across the room to make a seat for himself at the mirror, and sat now surrounded by an array of colorful bottles she hadn’t noticed the night before.  

“Ma chandelle est morte, je n’ai plus de feu…”

To the man’s left the lamp had been moved, and relit to avoid him having to open a patch in the tent to let in the sun.  To his right was his fire tome, open to a pair of pages near the middle glowing with magical energy.  Arranged on top of the pages in the shape of interlocking circles like the runes she knew to be printed on them, there was an array of little pieces of what appeared to be carved bone.  Virion set aside his brush and plucked one of the pieces from the page, leaving a thread of white smoke curling up from the spot where it had been waiting.  His words faded back into humming as he wound a thick strand of his hair around the handmade roller, then picked another to do the same with.

A little smile made its way to Endellion’s lips.  She opted not to disturb him--she wasn’t sure what the hour was, but her tired body had been so long without a good night’s sleep that she wasn’t prepared to leave the bed until absolutely necessary.  She snuggled back into the blankets and let out a soft sigh; Virion’s humming paused, then resumed again after a moment of her continued silence, more softly now.  

She prepared to allow herself to be lulled back to sleep, as his quiet melody was joined by a faint tinkling sound, and a rustle.  The bottles, maybe?  She smelled no perfume, though.  The strategist opened her eye again as the humming faded; sunlight and the sounds of someone barking orders flooded the room as the front flap was drawn sharply open and a gravely voice cut through the soft morning scene.

“Virion!  We need you to--”

Endellion bolted upright perfectly in time to see Virion whip about, curlers in his hair clacking together, and hurl a hot piece of carved bone across the room with expert marksmanship.  She was only aware that the man in the doorway was Lon’qu long enough to see him let out a sharp grunt of pain as the roller beamed him directly between the eyes, and he staggered backwards out from the tent that he’d made it less than halfway into.

“You fiend!” Virion called after him indignantly.  “Interrupting a gentleman’s morning routine is tantamount to criminal!  How dare you?”

She barely had time to bestill her beating heart before Lon’qu was replaced by two more men--one absurdly oversized to the point of having to forcibly squeeze himself into the tent and dressed already in full-plate armor, and one absurdly deep blue in hair, eyes, and nightclothes he hadn’t yet changed out of.

“Virion, on your feet!” shouted Chrom with a commanding urgency.  “We have an emergency!”

“Emergency?” stammered Virion, paling even further than normal.  Endellion’s heart caught in her throat.

Frederick chimed in on behalf of his lord.  “Endellion has gone missing!  I found her tent hanging open while on my morning rounds, and upon going to secure it closed once more I found it devoid of--”  Frederick’s booming voice fell short of finishing as his eyes fell on the woman sitting up in bed and staring at him in full terror.

“--Found it devoid of Endellion!” Chrom finished for him.  “We don’t know if it’s Risen or brigands or, gods, Gangrel himself, or where we might find her, so we need every man on hand for the search par--”

“Milord!” Frederick interrupted.  The prince stopped and turned to him, perplexed, then followed the line of his gaze and leapt in place upon spying their tactician as well.

“Endellion!”  Relief flooded into his features.  “Thank the gods!  We thought you were…  What are you doing in here?” he asked in genuine seriousness.  “Why are you in…”  Here, his words trailed off as he began to draw conclusions--very, very wrong ones, Endellion realized, her face flushing hotly, as Chrom’s ears went completely red to match.  “Gods, Endellion!” he shrieked, reverting from prince to mortified little brother.  Frederick abruptly crossed his arms behind his back and turned entirely about-face.  

“Chrom--F-Frederick, please!” Endellion shouted back at them, humiliated.  “It’s not what it looks like--for gods’ sakes, I’m fully dressed!”  She threw her coat aside and gestured forcefully at her nightdress, glaring.  

“Virion?” Chrom asked, her gesture going over his head completely.  “Virion, of all people?  Why Virion?”  She flushed even more angrily.

“G-Gentlemen, please!” Virion called to them before Chrom could elaborate on ‘why Virion’ would be particularly awful in his insinuation.  “What sorts of noblemen are you?  Please, clear your minds of all this--this indecency!”  He gave them a beleaguered sigh, pinching the bridge of his nose.

“Then what is going on here?” Chrom demanded, crossing his own arms in front of him.  Frederick still pointedly faced the wall.  “We thought you’d been kidnapped--carried off by some wicked…”  His royal blue eyes cut rather deliberately in Virion’s direction.  Virion sighed at him again.  Endellion barely suppressed a groan between her now-gritted teeth.  Her original plan had been to drift seamlessly into the morning routine without anyone noticing her.  How could she have left her tent open?  She must have left so quickly, given how terrified she had been at the time, that she had forgotten it entirely.  She searched herself now for an explanation--after all she’d gone through to keep her nightmares a secret, she wasn’t prepared to explain them to the general and his right-hand knight--

“Allow me to explain, if I must,” Virion began instead.  He sighed again, then flitted his hand towards the opposite side of the room, at his table with its checkered tapestry, wooden box, and handful of chessmen still dotting the patterned surface.  “Gaze upon this, friends.  Endellion and I frequently match wits in the evenings over games of strategy.  With war just declared, it grows only more necessary to have such practice, you see.  Note the black king still reigning proudly over the battlefield--the winner was, of course, me.”  He pressed his fingertips to his chest with a haughty smile.  “As I am perhaps the only truly worthy opponent for our dear tactician!”  Frederick still refused to turn around, but his whole body seemed to tighten at once, just enough to make Virion flinch mid-explanation.  “Erm, yes--moving right along:  As you can see, there is nary a single white piece left behind, and only a smattering of my own.  I fear between our ruthless pursuits of one another’s armies and our rousing conversation, we simply lost track of the time.  And I, being the gentleman that I am--”  Chrom frowned; Frederick huffed loudly through his nose; Virion continued unabated.  “--I simply offered that she stay the night.  I hardly wished to send her home at such a late hour, nothing more.”

“Yeah!” Endellion chimed in with a firm nod.  The other two men looked unconvinced.  She glared more harshly and Chrom flinched away from her, awkwardly rubbing the back of his head, though he seemed no less troubled.  

“U-Um, well,” he started carefully under her fierce gaze.  “I suppose all that matters is that you’re safe.  Frederick and I will call off the search party, then.”

The strategist sighed, relaxing her shoulders just a hair.  “Thank you.  I’m sorry to have worried everyone…”  

“It’s all right.”  Chrom gave her a sheepish smile.  “I think we’re all just slightly more on-edge, what with the war going on.”  She nodded to this.

At last Frederick relinquished and turned around to lower his head, looking rather sheepish himself in spite of his best efforts.  “Yes, forgive me for my… initial overreaction, Endellion.  Perhaps I should have bothered to check the other tents before moving to rally the troops.”  He briefly averted his large brown eyes, sternly furrowing his brow as he did.

“And, u-um, sorry as well for the insinuations,” added Chrom, scratching at the hair on the back of his neck again.  

“You’re both forgiven,” Endellion replied dryly.  The pair of intruders stood another moment in awkward silence, before Chrom spoke up again.

“But, since you’re both already awake, we should be getting back to the march soon.  We need to be sure the coast is secured from the Plegian armada, and we can’t afford to let a dalliance--”

“--To dally, milord,” corrected the knight.

“--D-Dally, right!” stammered the prince.  The tactician rolled her eye.  “Sumia’s taking care of breakfast right now, then we’ll be collecting our things and taking off.”  He fidgeted with his hands, before awkwardly finishing, “So, um, we’ll see you there.”  He circumnavigated the man behind him and flattened his palms on the great knight’s back, goading the massive man back out through the doorway.  The tent flap fell closed behind them.  Then Frederick’s hand poked back through it, politely fastened the lock, and disappeared once more, leaving Endellion and Virion alone in the tent with the tension in the air thick as molasses.  Endellion’s shoulders slumped and she covered her face.

“Well, that was torturous…” she groaned.  Virion let out another sigh.

“Yes, it certainly was…” he agreed.  “Forgive me, my lady--perhaps I should have woken you in time to meet our stalwart friend on his morning walk,” he considered, “but I didn’t wish to disturb you.”

“It’s fine--I’m sure he would have been full of questions if that had happened too.  I preferred the sleep.”  She grabbed the coat she’d thrown and pulled it back to her, stuffing herself inside and adjusting the hood around her shoulders, then slid her legs out from under the blankets and onto the floor where she picked up her boots.

“How fared your sleep, if I might ask?” Virion said.  Though he had turned back to his mirror, when she turned her head back to him she could see herself in its reflection now.

“Better!” the lady replied.  “I slept better than I have in weeks, I have to admit…  Turns out you weren’t just teasing when you said you could be soothing,” she said with a small laugh.  Virion’s reflection beamed back to her from the glass.  

“But of course, my dear!  That is something your Virion would never joke about!”

She finished tying on her boots and pushed herself onto her feet, then stretched her body as tall as she could, and arched her back until her shoulders popped.  Then she dropped her arms with a satisfied exhale, and pulled the tangles in her hair loose with a few rakes of her fingers as she turned to face the archer’s back.  “It’s a good thing those two aren’t very familiar with chess.  Thank you for not ratting me out.”

“All of your secrets are safe with me, my lady.”

“And yours with me, too.”  She smiled at his reflection; the reflection smiled in return.

“Shall I see you at breakfast, then?” he asked.  Endellion nodded.  “Very well--until we meet again, then!”  With that, he resumed his cheerful humming, though with fewer reservations about his volume than he’d had when he thought her still sleeping.  

But she stalled in making her exit.  She hesitated at the doorway, her fingers on the silver metal fastener.  It didn’t seem right to leave so shortly after all he’d done for her the night before.  After another moment, she called back to him.  “Um, Virion?”

“Yes?”  His humming stopped again and he scooted around on the stool to view her properly.  In the back of her mind, she recalled something else he had asked of her once as he had basked in the glow of another victory at one of their games.  His voice drifted back to the forefront of her memory:   _“Still, perhaps milady would see fit to reward the victor with a kiss?”_

Her cheeks flushed again.  Maybe not.  

“Um…”  

Virion raised his eyebrows curiously.  She came to a different idea instead.  

The lady crossed the width of the room over to him, and then bent down and carefully wrapped her arms around him, resting her chin against his shoulder and burying her nose into his soft hair and heated curlers.  “I just really wanted to thank you again, for everything,” she said softly into his ear.

Virion’s body went briefly tense when she embraced him, to her surprise, but after a breath he wound his arms around her torso and returned her hug.  “You are always welcome here, my dear,” he murmured in turn.

Endellion squeezed him once more, and then drew away with a smile and a little bit of a laugh, feeling just a bit embarrassed but overall pleased with the situation for what it was, whatever it was.  Then she made her way back to the doorway and pulled the tarp aside, stuffed her hands into her pockets, and stepped out into the sunlight to face the coming day.

 


End file.
